Good to hear Eamonn that you're still alive and kicking (and not the bucket). Scouting is something that stays constant in one's heart, despite the level of activity or lack thereof. I've come to the conclusion that volunteers would be well served by taking a break after four years of service. Those of us that put in many more years wind up taking a much longer break. Every now and then I have a twinge of an urge to attend the next district committee meeting, or offering to help out a struggling SM find his way. We shall see.

For the time being, regular e-mail works.
Who knows what the new software should or should not allow.
Some of us can't even get into various forums, let alone posts within forums.
I'd suggest waiting a few weeks, letting it work out its bugs, for the time being.

If a unit does not have an interesting and exciting program and boy are drifting away, I'd respectfully suggest that the unit leader examine what it is they are doing and not doing that result in a boring program. There are a ton of units that do exciting adventures week after month all year long and pull it off just fine. It is quite disingenuous to blame one's failure on distant "bureaucrats" and the evil empire in Texas. Just go camping!

Add one more statistic to the CDC data Twocubdad presented (which was for 2009):
While there were 554 unintentional deaths from firearms, there were 18,610 unintentional non fatal firearm-caused injuries during the same year. Crazy.

"Absurd" is in the eye of the beholder.
Looking at that NRA link, those 5,680 examples are from a period of time from the present going back to 1958. Seems like there would be more examples, but as you said, there may be some unreported incidents.
Here's some more data:
In the year 2011 there were 14,675 unintentional nonfatal firearm gunshot injuries in the United States. (per CDC statistics) As well, there may be unreported incidents.
You would think NRA could come up with a better case, if one could be made.

More common is that one absolutist says 2+2=13 and the other absolutist says 2+2=-37. How to get to 2+2=4 when both are out of the ballpark? Of course my point of view 2+2=3.99 is closest to the truth.

It is rather (sadly) humorous that it is only the gun folks that trot out the red herring straw man scenario of a ban on a gun based on its appearance and proceed to belittle the idea. Is that the best they can come up with?

A child gun access prevention law is hardly a stripping of constitutional rights. Indeed, if the gun folks on their own would figure out how to prevent kids from accessing guns and killing each other, there may be no need for access prevention. Until then, its not unreasonable to ask gun owners to keep their guns secured when they are not home. Failing that, you government will make an attempt to do so.

"Obviously, accidents do occur with guns, as they do with automobiles and bannana peels. But we have banned neither cars nor fruit."
If the purpose of bananas and cars was to kill people, and if people were being killed, there might just be some regulation. And with cars of course there is considerable regulation, and with no complaining about it.